"Assimilating the Mabo-Jumbo"

The recent hysteria that has engulfed society in the form of the Mabo
mass debate, has led me to ponder the nature of relations between Koori
and non-Koori peoples in this country. Why is it that after almost hree
decades of an army of Kooris trying to communicate with non-Koori Australia
in thousands of classrooms, books, TV shows, Royal Commissions, rock'n'roll
concerts, and football matches, we seem to have failed miserably in our
quest to educate Non-Kooris to understand us basically as people?

It's not as if Australians lack the capacity to understand and absorb
another culture. Just talk to any average Australian teenager for five
minutes and you will quickly realise how easily and totally Australia is
becoming assimilated into the culture of the United States of America.

This Americanisation of Australia's youth is viewed with increasing
concern by many non-Koori Australian parents, and yet these same good people
who see the evil of cultural imperialism clearly when it relates to the
USA and their own white middle-class Aussie kids, claim to not comprehend
the same principle when we apply it to our situation as Kooris.

As Kooris, we need to be ever vigilant to the subtle undermining of
our cultural values - values such as non-materialism, humanitarianism,
compassion and the belief that the group is more important than the individual.
These and other Koori ideas such as the proposition that living things
might be more important than material wealth have always been considered
subversive by non-Koori Australian society.

Failure to comprehend that Kooris are not white people with a black
skin has meant that Kooris have been subjected to many decades of imposed,
enforced attempts to assimilate us into "white" Australia. It was always
thought to be the best way of handling the "Abo problem". Of course Kooris
were never asked their opinion unless they were already successfully assimilated,
in which case they were held up as examples for the white community to
admire and the black community to aspire to.

But the old overt Assimilation Policy of the past has never gone away.
It has rather lurked in the sentiments and actions of powerful, behind
the scene bureaucracy power brokers in Canberra for 25 years. Today the
threat it poses to our Aboriginality and thus our spiritual survival in
the Australia of tomorrow, concerns many Koori Australians more than the
pseudo-debate over Mabo.

In "white" Australia today the free enterprise system with its attendant
values, attitudes and myths, prevails. Any person expressing doubt in the
fundamental tenets of the system is dismissed or marginalised.

A free-enterprise society exists on the assumption that all human beings
are essentially motivated, as individuals, by a desire for wealth and material
possessions. Further, that no meaningful human endeavour is possible without
the motivation of money.

These are powerful and dangerous myths, especially when propagated by
the potent symbols of modern western consumerism, and delivered direct
to our children courtesy of the most powerful mind-influencing weapon of
all - the TV set in our lounge, community hall or humpy.

When you superimpose that on the already ravaged Koori community and
begin to promote propositions such as individuality and the desire to acquire
more wealth and material possessions than your friends, family and neighbours,
then you are attacking the fundamental beliefs, philosophies and values
that distinguish Koori people from non-Koori peoples.

But every Koori person must eventually address the important questions
that arise when Koori values are confronted by some of the ugly and dangerous
aspects of non-Koori society. Increasingly, Koori's who pose these questions
in both the Koori and non-Koori communities are no longer just the so-called
radicals; these issues go to the heart of who we are as people, and the
things we have a responsibility to protect for future generations of our
peoples.

A free-enterprise style system is necessarily an alien concept to "Aboriginality".
Therefore we must be wary in Koori Australia of those in our own ranks
who promote free enterprise and capitalism for its own sake. Overseas experience
has shown that the unleashing of consumerist forces on Indigenous communities
only benefits a tiny elite, whose wealth then translates into power; something
not always handled responsibly and well by people inevitably changed by
wealth.

When people go from thinking, " What is ours!" to "What is mine!", there
has been a major fundamental shift in their psyche. This shift is central
to "Assimilation".

Government policies of Assimilation were conceived at a time when Kooris
were considered, at best, to be irresponsible children incapable of making
decisions for themselves, and at worst, sub-human. Aboriginal culture was
characterised as "primitive" compared to that of Anglo-Australia, so Aborigines
should be "educated" in the ways of the white man so absorbing the "white
man's" culture and values and thereby becoming "civilised", abandoning
their primitive ways and beliefs.

This ethnocentric (racist) attitude still lives on not only in Hugh
Morgan and Tim Fischer, but also in the breasts of the most influential
public servants.

I suspect, listening to and watching the Mabo "debate", that assimilation
also is considered the "final solution" in the minds of vast numbers non-Koori
ocker Aussies. After all, one of the most common bleats on talkback radio
during the Mabo Debate (Debacle), has been "Oh, why can't they be treated
like the rest of us? Why shouldn't they be like all other Aussies".

These views demonstrate yet again that Australia is still in the 1950s
and '60s when it comes to issues concerning indigenous peoples. The "white"
people of Australia have still not reached even a basic understanding of
the nature of Koori Australia. Assimilation is an out-moded, discredited
concept found to be both racist and genocidal by all peoples ever to have
it imposed on them by a stronger society with a different culture.

Assimilation as a concept is necessarily racist because it presupposes
that the majority culture is inherently superior to the minority culture.
It creates its own justification for the enforced imposition of the majority
culture on the minority.

And for Koori people, the personal cost of assimilating is their "Aboriginality".
If a Koori loses touch with his/her Koori identity by beginning to live
in a way which contradicts the basic philosophy and values of "Kooriness",
then that Koori person not only is no longer a true Koori, but they have
damaged part of their soul. There are many examples in indigenous communities
all over the world which show how native people who embrace the "white
man's" values inevitably do bad things to their own people, directly or
indirectly.

If you are a person who believes in the free-enterprise system, or in
some of its basic tenets like individualism, competition, and accumulated
material wealth, then you are by definition, not a Koori.

If this statement causes consternation in the minds of some of my brothers
and sisters, then rather than attack me they should instead perhaps examine
some of their own actions and seriously analyse their fundamental aspirations
and motivations. If they have retained the Koori ability to be honest to
themselves, some might be surprised and ashamed at what they find.

After all, it seems the past twenty years of intense; specifically targeted
government funding (some $20,000million in 20 yrs) has paid off. It has
undermined the strong Koori political movement of the 1960s & '70s.
A vast amount of that money was spent subverting, buying off and compromising
the key people in Koori communities all over Australia. The primary inducement
was money and material wealth, and in some instances, degrees of power
and influence.

It is obvious from the report of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody that the $20,000million spent did not benefit the vast
majority of Aboriginal people who, according to the report, live in essentially
the same situation they did in 1973.

Where then did the money go, I hear you ask?

Whilst vast sums were consumed by inept, inefficient, incompetent and
at times, corrupt, bureaucracies and their largely cosmetic, PR driven,
politically expedient, short-term programs, a significant amount was also
spent attracting large numbers of Kooris into government jobs and "mainstream"
(read "assimilationist") Aboriginal education and employment programs.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that most of these "mainstream"
Aboriginal education and employment initiatives have been monumental failures
precisely because of the requirement that Kooris participate on "white"
terms in programs conducted in "white" ways and more often than not conducted
by non-Koori people. Failure of most of these types of expensive government
programs is also evidence of the continuing passive resistance of Koori
peoples to inappropriate schemes and scams over which the recipients have
little say and control.

Attempts to impose assimilation, thus cultural genocide, on the Koori
peoples continue unabated in 1993, the International Year of Indigenous
People.

Over this period of high spending we have seen the emergence of a new
class of Kooris. These are what I call the "black bourgeoisie" - people
in highly paid positions in government and semi-government organisations
who help to maintain the facade of government programs they serve. These
people advise the government and bureaucracies, and at times, corruptly
manipulate both to direct subsidies and grants to groups connected to,
or controlled by, themselves.

They also serve as a political buffer for government and bureaucracy
when things get hot. In recent years when inept, corrupt or idiotic bureaucracy
programs come unstuck, we have seen increasing numbers of Koori faces on
TV as the up-front apologists for a system in which they have no real power!
This is a tragic phenomenon in some ways as it represents the final stage
of "assimilation". Orwellian; it is always sad for me to see a Koori brother
or sister reading a script devised by a non-Koori

But the numbers of Koori community leaders who are not compromised by
government "bribery" are getting fewer. Today it would be difficult to
name five Koori political activists in the country who do not receive government
monies, directly or indirectly. Too many of our leaders are compromised.
That is exactly how policies of the Fraser and Hawke governments neutralised
the Koori political movement that had been so strong in the '60s and '70s.

Another factor in the undermining of Koori Australia was the deliberate
ten-year refusal by all branches of the Hawke government to provide funds
to Koori groups to maintain their established regional and national conferences
to decide policy and strategy in a united manner. This robbed Koori groups
of the ability to coordinate their efforts and thus destroyed the cohesion
and effectiveness of that powerful national political lobby.

These policies of Hawke and Fraser must be understood to be parts of
the ongoing process of assimilation that drags us as Kooris further from
our fundamental being.

These issues are vital for the survival of the Koori way, yet they are
not seriously discussed at the abundance of conferences and seminars organised
inevitably by non-Kooris each year. Kooris have no say in running these
non-Koori controlled conferences, sometimes they are even denied a voice
- more evidence that pervading much of white Australia's official government
approach to Aboriginal community affairs are the ghosts of the assimilation
policy. It is vital and urgent for the non-Koori community to gain some
insight into the effects its society, institutions and attitudes has on
Kooris as people and communities. The difference between what Australians
claim to know about Kooris, and what they actually know about Kooris, is
huge.

On one hand the average talkback radio Aussie will rant and rave ad
infinitum about "Why should I feel guilty about 200 years ago"? Or "why
should the Abo's get any compensation, why can't they work like the rest
of us?", or "The government gives the boongs heaps of money but they spend
it all on grog.". But then ask these same people to name one of the 500
Aboriginal tribes; or if they have ever met a Koori; or if they know any
Koori words; or if they know what happened to the Koori families who used
to live where their houses now are; or if they can name an Aboriginal resistance
leader of the stature of Geronimo or Sitting Bull (of whom they have heard);
or asked them whether they knew about the concentration camp system under
the old "Protection" (Apartheid) Acts until 1967 (No? Didn't know?....
tut...tut....that was the German excuse!); or even if they know how much
the Federal government will expend on Aboriginal Affairs this financial
year, or, finally, do they know what proportion of that Federal budget
allocation will actually end up in Koori hands.

They would be struggling to answer more than one of these questions,
yet these are the self-same, self-proclaimed "experts" on the "Abo's" who
are ever ready to inflict their views on us. Is it any wonder it is so
difficult to conduct a reasonable, logical and rational public debate on
Mabo related issues today, given the extensive ignorance on the part of
non-Koori Australia. Whilst most of us Kooris know your world; your society;
your language and culture very well, you on the other hand know virtually
nothing of our world and what affects us today here in Melbourne for example.

How is it possible for people so ignorant of the basics of the topic
to participate and be taken seriously? How is it that anyone could even
pretend that any semblance of intelligent debate could occur in the midst
of such appalling ignorance? Well, to see the answer just switch on a radio
or TV, or just read the daily newspapers.

As the mumbo-jumbo of the Mabo debacle clearly shows, white Australia
has a hell of a lot to learn. It is ironic that they are such slow learners,
and are capable of such major mental blocks, on an issue so important to
the past, present and future of this country and all its peoples. Ironic
because most Aussies could hold a lengthy discussion on issues of mind-boggling
trivia, like footy or cricket statistics.

But there always has to remain hope, and the islands of sanity in the
sea of madness of the Mabo Debacle have been more profuse than anyone might
have suspected if their only source of information was commercial TV and
radio. I believe that once the heat dies down, and more sensible heads
prevail, this country stands not on the edge of a precipice into which
we might all fall, but rather on the edge of a new era, borne of a just,
honourable, equitable and mutually beneficial resolution of the oldest
historical dispute that exists in this country today.